The marketing wizards came up with
a strange English title for this movie. Their problem was
that the French title, Les Valseuses,
doesn't really work in English at all. It is a French slang expression for
testicles, and it would work beautifully in all senses in Spanish as
"Cojones". Most Texans and Californians and Floridians would
understand that word perfectly, but I'm not sure to what extent the
expression "cojones" was universally understood in America in
1974. "Balls" doesn't really work, because it sounds like a movie
about sporting goods, and "Nuts" sounds like a movie about a mental
asylum.

So
this film about two guys going nowhere at all in life, but always
going places in a physical sense, became "Going Places".

This is possibly the best film about the aftermath of the hippie
generation, a mini-lesson in history. About 1969 or so, you would not
see uneducated blue collar thugs with long hair. Long hair was a
statement of your solidarity with the university generation and its
causes - against war and racism, for sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll. The
long hair went with the peace sign, brother. In fact, blue collar
thugs were anti-marijuana, often pro-war, and beat up longhairs whenever they got the opportunity.

In
the subsequent years, the cachet attached by the press to the university
protest movement filtered out
into society in general. The media glamorized the protest generation,
and plenty of others joined in the "look" of the movement because they
liked the sex and rock 'n roll, even if they didn't share the
ideals. About at the same time when this movie takes place, blue collar guys
started abandoning their buzz cuts and greasy pompadours and getting into the
whole pony tail thing. By this time, the war was pretty much over,
Nixon was running away with his tail between his legs, and the
university protest generation was starting to worry about stock options. In
essence, the student protestors abandoned the protests as well as the
look, and moved on. The blue collar guys took over the long hair and
the marijuana as
well as the rebellion.

Problem was this - what were they rebelling against? They didn't
share those pacifistic hippie ideals of brotherhood. Well, if you
asked them what they were rebelling against, they might have said, "what've you got?" They were the
mid-70's version of the wild ones or the rebel without a cause. They just thought life
sucked. It was a dead-end for them. When they got out of high school,
they could look forward to a lifetime in a factory or something, and
the American Dream avoided their neighborhoods.

It
wasn't any different in France, which leads us back into Going Places.
The two leading characters are working-class yahoos with no urban
polish. Another character in the film calls them a couple of hicks, and it suits
them well. They don't have some sanctimonious counter-cultural cachet
or high minded political ideals. They are stiffs. Although only 23 and 25, their
life is already headed on the downhill slope. They
have no hope for a bright future, and they are outsiders in an
otherwise homogeneous middle-class world. They support themselves with petty crime, and they
amuse themselves with mischief, like little children. They go up to an
ugly old lady, pinch her bottom, and tell her she is their dream girl.
They offer money to a nursing mother for a suck on her breasts. They
take turns trying unsuccessfully to give a first orgasm to a frigid
young woman. They exchange insults with store security guards.

And they have their serious moments
as well, though those often derive from their scams. At one point the
boys decide that the perfect woman is one who has been in prison for a
long time, because such a woman would be longing for sex. So
they hang out outside a woman's prison on release day, hoping to pick
up a sexually frustrated ex-con. Of course, their
plan backfires, and they end up in an emotionally complex situation. They end up
with a partially-crazed menopausal old gal, and in a way they both
come to love her deeply. She has been released from prison with ten
dollars. Our boys' hearts open to her. They give her a good meal, new
clothes, an elegant hotel room, and plenty of fucking, only to
discover in the morning that she has committed suicide by shooting
herself in the vagina.

(French movies are never JUST
comedies, after all)

After the suicide, out of a sense of
love and guilt, they decide that they must take responsibility for the
woman's son, who is also in prison. So when sonny gets out, they meet
him and adopt him into their communal lifestyle, even though he seems
to be a feckless idiot. Immediately, this provides the usual humorous
comeuppance for the boys, because the incompetent and sexually
inexperienced dumbbell immediately brings their frigid girlfriend to a
explosive and lingering climax on his first try, despite their months
of failure and their belief that they "know all the tricks".

Sonny-boy is the one thing the two
thugs ever took responsibility for, and it proves to be a big mistake.
The clod eventually kills someone and therefore turns them all into
hunted criminals, which reconfirms our boys' innate belief that
irresponsibility is the correct way to go.

NUDITY REPORT

see Tuna's Thoughts

I have always loved and admired this
film, which was the first European movie I can remember to show real
people living real lives in real places. No phony-baloney aristocrats hanging out at
Spas, nor fairy-tale princesses, nor slickly amorous Casanovas. No
country villas, nor Parisian shopping districts, not exclusive
restaurants and clubs. The film avoided all the clichés about European
life. These boys (Patrick Deweare and Gerard Depardieu) inhabited a different France from the one we
pictured. They walked along deserted seacoasts peppered with
impoverished coastal towns in the off-season. They drove through lifeless villages and
past failing farms. They walked through urban neighborhoods filled
with graffiti, in which the homes were fortified like bunkers, and the
unadorned apartment buildings were square and indistinguishable. They
ate at restaurants without tablecloths, and they exhibited noisy and
messy table manners. When the bigger guy couldn't find any women, he fucked
his friend.

A lot of the humor is probably lost
in the translation from the French. I watched the DVD with both
dubbing and subtitles, and they were rarely in agreement on a proper
translation, which is probably a bad sign. But even under those
circumstances, I still think this film is funny, and touching, and
quite real.

There are some continuity problems
in the narrative, as if important scenes had been cut, or details had
simply been forgotten. The most obvious is that the nursing mother
leaves her baby behind when she changes train cars, then forgets her
baby completely when she gets off the train! The other really strange
cut occurs when they are penniless and hitchhiking one moment, then
driving an antique car instantly, with no explanation. But those are
minor irritations that shouldn't have a significant impact on your
overall enjoyment.

no
meaningful features, but it is possible to watch it with
English subtitles and/or with English dubbing

TUNA'S THOUGHTS

Going Places
(1974) was the film that established Gérard Depardieu as an
international star. Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere are
pseudo-hippies and petty thugs, who mug old ladies, steal cars,
and anything else they can think of for money. The rest of the
time, they are running from the police, their victims, etc, or
having sex. Miou-Miou plays a frigid woman who ends up being
their constant companion. She shows pretty much everything in
several scenes. The two run into Brigitte Fossey, a nursing
mother on a train. She is traveling to meet her boyfriend for
the weekend. They pay her to allow them to play with her
breasts. By the time she arrives, she is more than ready for her
boyfriend. A 19 year old Isabelle Huppert has a short scene near
the end of the film. She is picnicking with her parents when our
trio steals their car. She takes the thief's side, and leaves
with them. She ends up losing her virginity with them.

There are several references to a nipple exposure from Huppert,
but I did not find it in the wide screen version. It is possible
that there was one in a 4/3 aspect ratio version. There is a
distant shot of her bush (image 1).

This has the
necessary ingredients to be my kind of film. Lots of nudity from
known women, two anti-establishment heroes who get by on a lot
of luck, and decent photography and locations. I consider it a
B.

IMDb
guideline: 7.5 usually indicates a level of
excellence, about like three and a half stars
from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm
watchability, about like two and a half stars
from the critics. The fives are generally not
worthwhile unless they are really your kind of
material, about like two stars from the critics.
Films under five are generally awful even if you
like that kind of film, equivalent to about one
and a half stars from the critics or less,
depending on just how far below five the rating
is.

My own
guideline: A means the movie is so good it
will appeal to you even if you hate the genre. B means the movie is not
good enough to win you over if you hate the
genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an
open mind about this type of film. C means it will only
appeal to genre addicts, and has no crossover
appeal. D means you'll hate it even if you
like the genre. E means that you'll hate it even if
you love the genre. F means that the film is not only
unappealing across-the-board, but technically
inept as well.

Based on this
description, this film is a B-. I don't normally like rambling,
unresolved, picaresque movies, but I like this one.